The Beast Within
The moment hit like a thunderclap. Wait—what the—?!
Terra’s soul had been welded and torn apart over and over, each cycle plunging her into unimaginable agony. But now, something far more horrifying surged through her. An instinctive, bone-deep dread made her very spirit tremble. It eclipsed every torment she had endured before. The instant it struck, her already shattered mind began to feel as if it were being swept away by an invisible current.
Like a ship whose anchor rope had snapped, drifting helplessly into the storm. Inside that merciless tide, Terra tried to scream—tried to unleash a desperate, broken wail—but no sound reached her own ears. Or rather… it wasn’t that she couldn’t hear anything. It was that nothing came out at all.
‘….Ah…’
Within the hellish chaos of her fracturing psyche, Terra barely managed to regain a sliver of awareness. The very next instant, she realized the Shackle of Control that had bound her was gone. The restraints that had crushed her will, the sensations that had tortured her—everything had vanished.
‘Is it… over? But… why…?’
She thought of the hero’s actions—how he must have released her. Terra tried to stand, intending to face the man still visible before her eyes and demand an explanation. He had clearly said he would use her for that, so why had he freed her?
But the moment she tried to move—
‘…Huh?’
—she sensed something was terribly, catastrophically wrong.
‘What… what is this? This… this can’t be… what the hell is happening?’
She had tried to lift her head and look straight at the hero. Yet her body refused to obey the commands of her mind—of the personality and consciousness known as Terra.
‘Why? The shackle is definitely gone… nothing is binding me anymore. So why… why can’t I…?’
It didn’t feel like she was restrained the way she had been before. There was no sense of being locked down. And yet, despite this strange freedom, she could not stand up. She could not even raise her head. It wasn’t limited to her limbs, either. She could not open her mouth, could not draw breath on command, could not furrow her brow—nothing. Not a single action answered her will.
The only thing left to her was to passively receive every sensation that came from the outside world. She could see, hear, and feel through her skin. She could register it all. But she possessed zero control over any of it.
And the exact moment her mind grasped what that meant, when pure terror began to bloom inside her—
“You awake?”
“Woof?”
‘…!’
The hero’s voice reached her ears. At the same time, her body—completely ignoring the frantic interference of her true consciousness—rose smoothly to its feet as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
The sounds spilling from her own mouth were indistinguishable from a dog’s barking. Her consciousness had been completely severed from reason and ego. All that remained was the blind instinct of a beast utterly devoted to the “Master” standing before it.
Terra’s rationality—now belonging to something that could no longer be called a beastkin, only a literal animal—sank into an abyss of thick, suffocating despair.
Yet no matter how violently those emotions raged, she could do nothing. She could not cry. She could not scream in agony. Nothing was permitted to her anymore. The only things left for the entity once called Terra were to watch… and to receive whatever sensations drifted in from the outside. Nothing more.
*
“Huff… huff… huff…”
Right in front of me, Terra wagged her tail and displayed the perfect image of a dog. Watching her, I knew without a doubt that the 3% “failure” chance I had been aiming for had activated successfully.
‘It took a little longer than I expected… but hey, it worked. That’s what matters.’
The Shackle of Control. An item that temporarily sealed the target’s ego and turned them into an obedient puppet. In the original game, it was Torare’s last-ditch, irregular method to fulfill the ending conditions after failing to conquer all four heroines. Using it forced one unconquered heroine into submission and triggered the ending branch.
But such a powerful tool capable of reversing the entire story naturally came with a penalty: a failure rate. When the message “The shackle’s power has gone berserk—3% chance activated” appeared, the heroine’s connection between body and mind was permanently severed. Her intelligence stat would regress until she was no longer human, but a mere beast.
In Aileen and Amelda’s cases, their combat power would be cut in half. Shude, the witch, would become practically worthless. Terra, who had originally been a warrior beastkin, wouldn’t lose much fighting strength… but the real problem was far more severe than that.
Any heroine who suffered this fate was reclassified by the system as a “pet” that could be raised like an animal. The change was permanent—even the Elixir of the Gods could not undo it. The game wouldn’t trigger a Game Over screen, but every possible route to an ending was permanently blocked. In practice, it was a forced game over.
And now, the result of that “failure” stood before me: Terra, reduced to something no different from a pet, panting with her tongue lolling out.
Even though she looked as if her mind had flown away, I knew from the original story’s description that her rationality—Terra’s true ego—still existed inside that animal body. She would simply never be able to come out again.
‘Reminds me of that old movie. The one where they transplanted a black man’s brain into a white man’s body… The original owner’s consciousness was trapped exactly like this, wasn’t it? Or was it the other way around?’
With that thought, I gently stroked the head of Terra, who was gazing up at me with sparkling, innocent eyes. She immediately let out a happy little whine and gave me the purest, most joyful expression imaginable.
Completely unrelated to the fact that her inner self was probably screaming in endless despair, her outer self expressed nothing but pure, untainted delight toward her Master.
*
“So… the hero, you say.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Kneeling before the Demon King seated at her office desk, Elisa began reporting the results of the latest operation, her voice filled with open admiration.
Not only had they successfully intercepted the supply convoy departing from the military base at Rob, they had burned every last month’s worth of stored provisions. On top of that, the hero had defeated the defending general and even captured the beastkin female warrior who had once belonged to the hero party. Elisa relayed every detail without omission, her cheeks slightly flushed in a way quite unlike her usual self, her tone bright with excitement.
“It was truly remarkable. From the way he cut down humans without the slightest hesitation, to the clever schemes he used to deceive those foolish humans and infiltrate their ranks… and that gallant figure when he rescued this humble subject from danger—”
“If even you speak so highly of him, Elisa, may I take that to mean there is no longer any need to doubt the hero?”
The Demon King calmly interrupted Elisa’s increasingly heated words. Realizing she had grown overly emotional, Elisa quickly composed herself and continued in a much steadier voice.
“Ah… yes, yes. As Your Majesty says, with such outstanding ability and such clear hatred toward humans, it seems we can entrust him with missions without worry from now on.”
“I see… That is good to hear.”
…?
The Demon King answered with a strangely dark expression. Elisa set aside her earlier excitement, her voice now carrying a hint of concern and confusion as she asked her lord,
“Um… Your Majesty? Is something bothering you? You don’t look well.”
“…No, it is nothing of the sort. I was simply a little surprised. The fact that the hero would go to such lengths for me… for our demon race… was something even I had not anticipated.”
The Demon King offered a gentle smile to reassure her subject. Then she straightened her expression once more and spoke to Elisa in a calm voice that still carried the unmistakable dignity of a monarch.
“Then, where is the hero now?”
“As far as this servant knows, he has returned to his quarters. Together with that beastkin female warrior.”
“Understood.”
The moment the words left her lips, the Demon King rose from her seat. Elisa felt a flicker of doubt and asked cautiously,
“Where are you going, Your Majesty?”
“I intend to visit the hero. He has performed the task I assigned him admirably. It is only proper that I reward him accordingly, is it not?”
Her voice was quiet, almost subdued. Elisa bowed her head in respectful farewell. The Demon King walked out of the office in silence, carrying emotions too complicated to show to anyone else.